Rig survivor wants court date before BP deal approved

Amid the emotional outpouring from families of those who died aboard the Deepwater Horizon is a simple request that U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance needs to grant before she approves BP’s record criminal settlement later this month.

Buddy Trahan, a Transocean manager and the most seriously injured survivor of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, remains in legal limbo, his case against BP entangled with other civil claims pending in a different New Orleans federal court.

In a statement filed with Vance last week, Trahan asked her to free his lawsuit from that combined civil litigation and return it to the Houston state court in which he originally filed it.

Trahan is permanently disabled from injuries he sustained in the rig explosion. As BP and the government were putting the final touches on their criminal settlement late last year, he was preparing for his eleventh surgery.

Trahan’s statement was among a handful filed by survivors and family members of the 11 men killed in the disaster.

One Response

BP deserves to deal with their admittedly criminal case in a reasonable manner. The purpose of the criminal case is to hold BP accountable for harming the public, not Mr. Trahan specifically. If Mr. Trahan wants certain penalties for BP, he has to go through the prosecuters and get them to charge BP with the applicable crime. The state is the plantiff in a criminal case, not the victim.

Now the civil case is a completely different matter. I would hope Mr. Trahan would win $100+ million in his civil case, and he does deserve to control how his civil case is prosecuted.